Ist there a way to see a transparent documented development process that led for example to the SegWit ubdate and the BCH hard fork?

Indeed, for people who are optimistic about bitcoin, choosing a buy the dip and HOLD strategy is a good strategy to add to their portfolio. However, as an investment strategy, of course, buying the dip must be accompanied by controlling risk. One of them is by determining the target selling price when we buy when the price drops.

Hey, no need to delete anything, please! We're just discussing, it's all good. I understand; they want privacy from their significant other or something like that - well for that prepaid cards could suffice or maybe they should just sort out their personal issues. Anyhow; if they do buy something that has to be secret in their marriage (but also possibly country / community / social circle), do note that if they buy through a centralized exchange, their wife could get the withdrawal address from the exchange by calling them. Then she could trace the payment. Is this why they would want to use CoinJoin (through Wasabi)? If the wife wouldn't go to such lengths, the only 'privacy issue' would be that the exchange knows they're buying adult material; why is that an issue? If it's not a marital issue but indeed a political one, they should be much more careful and really avoid a centralized exchange; no matter if coinjoining or not.
So while I get your point in a way, personally I try not only telling people about Bitcoin but also how / where to get it and why. They should get a full understanding of what they're pouring their hard earned money into, and not live in an illusion of privacy or security when there is none.

i.e. any profit margin is always thin in a free and open market

the typical behavior of large operators is to:

1. be unhappy
2. find a way to increase the fixed costs of business for everyone in the market, to drive the smaller operators out
3. find a way to (softly) get customers to accept higher prices (trying to manipulate how they think is quite usual)


so we can expect that to happen with Lightning node operators at some point, at least some kind of attempt at it

CBDC is essentially electronic cash. Like traditional fiat currencies. Central banks are increasingly concerned about losing control of money supply and payment systems, as cryptocurrencies are becoming more prevalent in payment transactions. Since CBDCs are issued by a central bank, they can achieve the benefits of central bank issued currency without the problems of the unregulated decentralized currency.

The IMF reports that almost 100 countries are analyzing the possibility of introducing central bank digital currency (CBDC), and some of these countries have already begun the implementation process. So, yes, we may be entering an era where these digital currencies will become more common. But I don't believe they will replace national currencies anytime soon. In fact, most likely, they will co-exist with national currencies for the foreseeable future, complementing them rather than replacing them.

I understand that you are responding to both of us, and surely BlackHatCoiner can speak for himself - nonetheless, I doubt that either of us are being unfair to you.

Personally, I have no problem accepting that shitcoin pumpening happens and is likely an inevitable phenomenon - but the mere fact that it happens and is likely inevitable neither means that it is necessary nor does it mean that any of us need to talk endearingly about it.. or even to frame the matter as if shitcoins were equal to bitcoin or that they bitcoin needs them in order to strive or survive - which seems to be your ongoing presumption in your ongoing striving to supposedly speak truths, Wind_FURY.

You can write about these matters however you like, but you seem to be bringing backlash upon yourself - because you seem to either ongoingly be engaging in shitcoin pumpening or just unnecessary shit stirring out of your supposed "more accurate" view of matters.  You do what you like, but there are likely several bitcoiners, including yours truly who will respond from time to time - because we are in a public forum and some of us just have difficulties letting such ongoing sloppy presentations to slide and likely cause more confusion that may well even mislead some folks - especially newbies.

Lets put up some sites that do accept LN payment.

https://betplay.io/en/
https://thunderpick.com/
https://simpledice.com/
https://luckydice.com/

Havent tried or tested if it does work smoothly but its good that there are platforms who do make use of it.

Well, first of all, the anonymity set of 'all UTXOs' is much larger than 'only the clean ones', so by definition, not caring about taint gives you more privacy. Do note that not all 'tainters' have the same definition; which means to be 'really on the safe side', you need to take the intersection of all 'clean pools' and try to get a UTXO out of there. I believe it will prove pretty difficult. I mean, what's the utility if you get a 'clean coinbase utxo' which you can only send back to Coinbase, because other exchanges have a different definition and according to them, it is tainted?

You just told me your friends care about privacy, but then you are telling me they use a centralized exchange. This doesn't add up. If they care about privacy, they are using a decentralized exchange which doesn't care about some arbitrary party's definition of taint.

As others here have said just keep in mind that there tends to be “catches” with every type of offer when it comes to getting money back. Now I personally don’t know of any online casinos, or offshore casinos I should say, that give some losses back ,but I do know some of the biggest players like FanDuel will give a small amount lost back but only on your very first bet I believe. All of the other money back opportunities that I know of tend to be bonuses.

You have been involved in this forum long enough Wind_FURY to be able to attempt to appreciate that a lot of the bitcoiner members appreciate that members post in a way that recognizes the reality that bitcoin is both king daddy, and there is not some kind of equivalencies going on regarding what various shitcoins are doing.  If you fail to frame matters in that kind of way, then you are opening yourself up to attack, whether you are doing it on purpose or not... Maybe you really believe there is no difference between incentives in shitcoins versus various ongoing developments in bitcoin second and third layers, whether we are referring to lightning network or some other 2nd/3rd layer developments?

It seems to me that we can still acknowledge that some value might come from various shitcoin projects - in terms of potential learning about technical or implementation angles that bitcoin could take in the future (or even improve in various current development attempts) - whether referring to base layer or various kinds of second and third layers. 

Seems to me that if you strive to just gloss over bitcoin differentiations - and to seem to want to pump various kinds of shitcoins as if they were equivalent to bitcoin in some kind of way or to even suggest that they are working off of the same incentives when foundationally, there are so many shitcoins that printed their own token, instead of working off of bitcoin - which thereby causes them to have lesser incentives because they have created money/making and money printing incentives for themselves on various kinds of projects that might even have some parallels in bitcoin.. but coming way earlier than bitcoin - and causing all kinds of seemingly premature pump and dump smoke and mirror nonsense going on all over the place with various shitcoins - even if you want to outline the various incentives in shitcoinlandia as if they were all the same - and equivalent to the incentives that are designed in bitcoin (if we can at least attempt to acknowledge that there is a certain amount of attempts in bitcoin to peg projects back to bitcoin's base layer and mostly acknowledge the extent to which some separate token (or business centralizations) might exist on bitcoin layer 2s and 3s that are ongoingly being developed. 
 

Well, saying that the price will go the moon resembles to this behavior.

This is irrelevant and it's also a hasty generalization; just because there's incentive to secure it, doesn't mean you're encouraged to keep it and dump it later in a higher price, because that's how "to the moon" sounds like.

There's development to make it more utilizable. It happens to attract investors. If the opposite occurred, it'd probably be another fraudulent, ponzi-looking situation.

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That's just my opinion, by the way. I don't want to seem absolute nor am I holding the holy chalice of truth. This is just the way I perceive things.

Wind Fury, enjoy the profit, HODL, have some diamond hands, whatever, you're allowed to say and do whatever you want. But, please, don't make it look like the Ether-scum where they can't look forward for upgrades and 2.0 gibberish to see green candles.

It's just that I want improvements in Bitcoin simply for the sake of having a better payment system and not for the sake of making some investor bags of money. Sure, the value of Bitcoin is that it's such a good payment system, so that's part of the reason it has a high price. But this shouldn't be the main motivation for innovation. That's why a statement like 'this new technology will get btc to the moon' generally rubs me the wrong way.

I am pretty sure they find other creative ways to screw you over. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Either their rates suck or they randomly enforce KYC or something else. This kind of stuff won't let the casino make any profits and if the casino can't make profits it will go bankrupt. Since the house can't go bankrupt, in end it must be the players that pay for this feature. You are wise to be skeptical about this.

You guys don't really understand that it is not really about "banning", it never was. It is all about control. The government wants to have as much control as they can, especially over things which they consider to be harmful to a certain group of people, for example, in this case, children.

Putting such arbitrary restrictions over online casino gambling advertisments is just one way to have more freedom over what they control while making it seem like they are putting down iron-clad rules with boundaries.

I doubt they want to protect children from gambling addiction even though they make it seem that way...

I have caught myself thinking, that I hardly can remember Russian gambling platform, that supports cryptocurrency. I am speaking about completely Russian platform, not a platform that supports Russian language and has a site weird machine translation. I remember only platforms that mainly support Russian rubles, and rarely EUR and USD. As a crypto forum, boycotting Russian rubles, that looks funny

No arguments there but the assumption was about CBDCs that were created and controlled by regimes that aren't considered dictatorships like Canada's or China's. And also another assumption was that cryptocurrencies would be regulated like it is in many parts of the world. Like if Japan created their own CBDC and they already consider bitcoin a currency and have no problem with it being traded.

Surprisingly enough the Chinese altcoin (digital yuan) seems to be doing fine as they reported a little less than $10 billion worth of transactions recorded on their chain (if we can call it a chain!). There are also at least 2 new ones coming out in the coming months.

Suddenly it seems like the central banks jumped on board of the Bitcoin train but only took the blockchain technology and ran away.

I personally don't care how many of them are created as long as they don't try to ban bitcoin or restrict its adoption in any way (like closing bank accounts of those who dump fiat for bitcoin).

There may even be some silver lining that these CBDCs could replace the stable-coins in the market in the near future and we end up even seeing Atomic Swap capabilities added where you could easily swap one CBDC for another or for bitcoin without the risk of centralized stablecoins (issued by shady companies). That would definitely simplify things for traders while significantly reducing the risks they take.

Russian based gambling sites are still active but there may be a decline on their users. Let us not give this a bad meaning thinking that the one that started this do also owns a gambling site and wants other gambling sites to go down but this advocacy can be sincere and only for the sake of punishing Russian citizen or the Russian country for what they have done with Ukraine, not also on Ukraine actually because the effect is felt on other countries as well.

What you see here is true, this is not fake. The poster of this thread is only just a regular user that also joins a signature campaign, he isn't an owner of a gambling site. If you hate what Russia did, then you can support this boycott.